When it comes to beloved collectors’ pastimes, old baseball cards are a surprisingly lucrative business. Famous players like Derek Jeter, Joe Jackson, Ken Griffey Jr. and more have lent their famous faces to baseball cards that would, later on, rack up thousands of dollars in value. If you have some of these old baseball cards in good condition, you could be sitting on quite a fortune.
For years, the most expensive baseball card ever sold was the coveted Honus Wagner 1909 T206 card, originally made by the American Tobacco Company. For years, collectors assumed no card would ever surpass its whopping $3 million sale – that is, until Mike Trout’s rookie card sold for $3.8 million, proving that modern baseball cards are just as valuable as retro classics.
The hobby of collecting baseball cards has been around for over a century. The sport itself was invented in 1839 by Abner Doubleday, who would later become a Civil War hero. It started out with plain sticks and dirt fields, but now, companies like Nike shell out million-dollar contracts for MLB superstars – making it one of America’s most profitable sports.